


you are my sweetest downfall

by Rupzydaisy



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Fluff, andromaquynh, i play fast and loose with mythology, my apologies, reunion au, the Bargaining Stage of Grief, there is a happy ending for them, you and me - until the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26011291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rupzydaisy/pseuds/Rupzydaisy
Summary: There are names that came both before hers and after. Andromache struggles to remember them, but for all that she does, she calls on them. She pleads to Tiamat,drain your ocean dry for her,sobs to Nu and Ağ Ana,raise her back up, bring her home where she belongs,begs Yam,I will take on any burden, trade my life for hers, place me in those depths instead.She asks Bangpūtys, Lạc Long Quân, Aruna, Tsovinar, Mazu;How did I wrong you? What can I do? Any trial, any task. Tell me! Show me!Andromache appeals to the names before them, those lost to time and memory. It is a desperate hope that they would stir for her, for Quynh, but if ever they were to, perhaps it would be for ones with equally long memories.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 10
Kudos: 101





	you are my sweetest downfall

**Author's Note:**

> title from regina spektor's samson  
> also...  
>  _Oh, I cut his hair myself one night  
>  A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light  
> And he told me that I'd done alright  
> And kissed me 'til the mornin' light, the mornin' light  
> And he kissed me 'til the mornin' light_

After the witch hunts, after spending so long searching the coast and cities for a scrap of useful information and hunting down men who may or may not have the answers, Andromache slows down. It’s not from a cooling of her anger, or a stopper on the raging torrent of _wanting_ to find Quynh alive and safe, but from feeling the sheer weight of what feels like an impossible task laying heavy on her. 

Joe cajoles her away from endless stretches of beaches so that she can sleep and eat, while Nicky follows like her own shadow as she enters custom house after custom house to find records of shipping routes and information on crew manifests. 

It is an endless task, but they have the time for it. 

Andromache picks her way through however many stacks of papers, tracks down the barest of whispers and rumours, threatens and bribes her way through dozens of men linked to the ship. But no one can say where the iron maiden was thrown off the ship.

There’s an anger within her that rages through the days and nights, to the point where she tears through the docks on the south coast with her axe swinging wildly and only stops when there’s silent wreckage around her. 

It’s not enough to bring her quiet.

After that, the three of them have to flee inland from rumours of demons set loose on the good Christian workers in retaliation for the successful hanging of foul witches.

“Andromache.” Nicky’s voice is low and urgent as the sun begins to peek out above the waves. “Andromache, we have to leave. We have the last of the papers.” 

It’s Joe who steps to take her shoulders, and he who leads her back. “We won’t stop looking, we promise.” 

Andromache finds herself back on the pier, decades later, once all the leads have dried up. There’s a three metre or so drop between her and the saltwater, and it would be easy, so easy to tip over the edge and dive down. She’d welcome it, even with the fear she now possesses of the depths, if it meant a fair trade. 

Her life for Quynh’s. 

If it meant that somehow, her slipping under would mean that Quynh would rise up to the surface. 

“It doesn’t work like that.” Nicky tells her gently, having followed her out to the pier. 

Desperate to try anything, she asks back, “How do you know?” 

“Because we can’t lose you too, Andromache.” Joe explains, and when she turns back, she can see in his eyes how his heart is breaking, feeling the pieces of her tilt within her own chest, and finds it hard to argue with that. 

After it all, she’s not so sure. If this task were a mountain, she would break it down, stone by stone, one axe swing at a time. That she’s sure of. But the sea is vast and wide and unfathomably deep. There is little more she can do that she hasn’t already done. Time and again, she journeys back to the same spot to peer down into its darkness, while the pier is washed away, is rebuilt, and burnt down.

And so Andromache is lost too. 

It becomes unbearable to see Nicky and Joe without her eyes searching for Quynh on the other side of the room, or the inevitable return to the madness of walking up and down the shores she had lost her to. When the time comes, she embraces them, and then leaves to wander distant lands in search of an answer. 

* * *

Her time spent wandering leaves her alone with her thoughts; and many of them turn to impossible things. 

Andromache knows of them because she _is_ one of them; a woman who dies and lives and dies again, only to find a fate worse than death. 

There are other things she knows, other stories she’s heard of in her long life. There are tales she’s come across in taverns and inns. During those long nights, she kept her ears open and listened into the night as a bard or traveller with a knack for weaving fables together traded their words for a warm meal and a blanket. Even before then, she had sat at firesides and stoked the flames long after the sun had set, and listened to stories of love and loss, war and glory, fear and fortune. Heavily scattered among those fables were myths and legends of gods and demi-gods, spirits and demons, of people alike to her and her forever-beating heart. 

When she rides across the steppe, through forests, over sands, they call her a vengeful ghost, a lamenting shadow, a woman without a heart. She was once worshipped as a god, but now when she searches within herself for an unwavering faith in something or someone else, she struggles to find it. 

Andromache walks in her old footsteps, and everywhere she goes there are touchstones, old and new. She doesn’t leave without whispering her sole wish between crumbling and gleaming stones in as many languages as there are idols on altars or images etched into walls. Her tongue stalls over prayers lost to time and where there are new ways of asking a higher power, she watches closely and copies the women around her. 

“Anything,” she pleads in the quiet moments, “Anything at all.” 

There are names that came both before hers and after. Andromache struggles to remember them, but for all that she does, she calls on them. She pleads to Tiamat, _drain your ocean dry for her,_ sobs to Nu and Ağ Ana, _raise her back up, bring her home where she belongs,_ begs Yam, _I will take on any burden, trade my life for hers, place me in those depths instead._

She asks Bangpūtys, Lạc Long Quân, Aruna, Tsovinar, Mazu; _How did I wrong you? What can I do? Any trial, any task. Tell me! Show me!_

Andromache appeals to the names before them, those lost to time and memory. It is a desperate hope that they would stir for her, for Quynh, but if ever they were to, perhaps it would be for ones with equally long memories. 

She even heads to the first place she called home, where the sky is wide and blue, and the breeze blows true. 

On her knees, Andromache lifts her head and prays, sings, screams. The hot summer breeze and the cold winter winds all blow over her tear stained cheeks, ripple through her shorn hair, and leave her alone on the plains. 

Time passes on, the years turn over. She circles back, eventually, and returns to Joe and Nicky. They help her as much as they can. They keep her moving, through looking for ways in which together, the three of them, can help others, if not Quynh. 

And if each good deed and the fraction of help Andy portions out into the world is somehow a way to rebalance the scales and prove that Quynh deserved to escape from her watery jail, then it was by the by.

* * *

“I don’t remember you having it so short.” Quynh cards her fingers through her hair, lifting and letting it fall gently. She adjusts her grip on the golden scissors, a leftover from the Renaissance that had been crafted by an artisan and given as a gift from Joe. 

“I cut it short after the witch hunts, after losing you. It made for easier travelling.” 

Andy smiles into the mirror, but her eyes drift away as Quynh smooths her fingers down the nape of her neck. Her hair remains long and beautiful, the centuries of damage the saltwater had done to her body were reversed as soon as she had stepped onto shore. 

Quynh’s fingers pause on the back of her neck, and then wrap around her shoulders to squeeze tight as Andy continues, “I made bargains with myself, with anything called a higher power, like a fool.” 

She ducks her head lower, allowing Quynh to finish off tidying up the line at the base of her neck, tapering the hair back until it was neat again. She breathes out slowly, finding peace in the softest of touches under the golden glow of the old bulb fixed into the bathroom ceiling. There’s a light dusting of chopped hair under her bare feet that tickles her toes. It makes her press her lips together, for laughing out of turn, and then needing to explain that _really,_ _she doesn't mind it at all,_ not the cut hair itching under her tank top nor her century-spanning wrangles with faith. 

“I had felt the same before I met you, in the desert.” Quynh shifts to sit on the side of the bathtub, and lifts her hand to Andy’s cheek. "In the sea, it was the same again. I asked the water to relinquish me. I asked death to take me. Neither would, or could." 

A question lingers on And's tongue, a remnant of years lost that still manages to burn through. Her feet press into the cool tiles, and it sends a small shiver down her spine. "You think so?" 

It makes Quyhn pause, and she leans into her touch, just because she can. 

"I know I fought my way back. With every death, and every awakening." Quyhn shakes her head, "If there was something else, something beyond that, perhaps that was all it could do. To keep me living as long as I needed to."

Andy tips forwards until their foreheads touch. "We don't make the rules, do we?"

And it's true, some mysteries remain beyond them. They prefer it that way. It would be a lonelier existence if all answers were provided.

But she doesn't have time to ponder on the unanswerable, not when she feels Quynh’s smile against her lips. Instead Andy closes her eyes and wraps her arms around Quynh's neck. The kiss is sweet and soft, a drop in the ocean compared to the years parted. But neither mind about that in the moment, not when they know they have everything they wanted. 

"You and me, until the end.” Quynh’s smile remains as she leans back, and her eyes are brighter than any of the shadows in their past. “What will come, will come, Andromache. But we will always be together." 

**Author's Note:**

> i didn't do massive research on sea/water deities, so if something is amiss please let me know  
> also...i've left the ending vague so it is open to interpretation ;)


End file.
